The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes - Neil Gaiman

   2018; 236 pages.  Volume 1 (out of 11) in the “Sandman – 30^th Anniversary Edition” series.  Full Title: Sandman Volume One: Preludes & Nocturnes.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Graphic Novel; Horror; Dark Fantasy.  Overall Rating: 9½*/10.

 

    Neil Gaiman is one of my favorite contemporary authors.  I first became acquainted with his work 16 years ago via his collaboration with Terry Pratchett in the fascinating novel, Good Omens.  Within a year-plus I’d also read his solo efforts, American Gods and Anansi Boys, both of which I consider to be masterpieces.

 

    I’ve read most of his solo novels since then, with only The Graveyard Book still on my TBR shelf.  But over the last 10 years he seems to have slowed down in his writing of full-length novels.

 

    Then I heard about his series called The Sandman.  “Aha!”, thought I, “Neil Gaiman has turned to putting out graphic novels!  Awesome!”

 

    Actually, the first volumes of his Sandman comics came out slightly before his first novels.

 

What’s To Like...

    According to Wikipedia, there were 75 issues in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comic book series.  Preludes and Nocturnes is a 2018 re-release of the first eight comic book issues, comprised of

    1.) Sleep of the Just  (loc. 11)

    2.) Imperfect Hosts  (loc. 53)

    3.) Dream a Little Dream of Me  (loc. 77)

    4.) A Hope in Hell  (loc. 103)

    5.) Passengers  (loc. 128)

    6.) 24 Hours  (loc. 154)

    7.) Sound and Fury  (loc. 180)

    8.) The Sound of Her Wings  (loc. 205)

 

    Our protagonist goes by several names in the series, including Morpheus, the King of Dreams, Dream, and the titular Sandman.  At one point he is caught and imprisoned by a mortal who mistakenly thinks he’s captured the King of Death, which confused the daylights out of me.  The character "Death" does finally show up in the final book, and is an equally interesting character.

 

    Each of the eight books has its own storyline.  Needless to say, our hero escapes his prison early on, but is in a weakened condition and without several of his important artifacts: a pouch, a helm, and a ruby.  The overall storyline chronicles Dream’s efforts to retrieve those items.  Along the way, Neil Gaiman weaves in mythological references (such as the Hecateae), Reality “Slam Contests”, and a couple cameo appearances by other comic book stars.

 

    I read the e-book version of Preludes & Nocturnes, which is usually a clunky way to read a graphic novel.  But Kindle starts you out with a couple of tips for navigating the images on each page, and once I got the hang of things, I was amazed how smoothly things went.  Scrolling is ultra-slick, and the artwork, lettering, and storytelling are all incredible.

 

    Since this is a compilation of eight comic books, there is no discrete “ending”.  Book 8 does stop at a logical point in the saga, with a lot of the plot threads being explained and cleared up, and the stage being set for the next 67 installments in the series.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.8*/5, based on 5,823 ratings and 368 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.24*/5, based on 254,869 ratings and 8,898 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    “Do you know what dreams are made of, Rosemary Kelly?”

    “Made of?  They’re just dreams.”

    “No.  They aren’t.  People think dreams aren’t real because they aren’t made of matter, of particles.  Dreams are real.  But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes.

    “The ruby seems to turn them into matter.  It forces them to translate themselves into forms we can recognize in this world.

    “It also controls dreams in their raw state.  Your dreams.  Anybody’s dreams.”  (loc. 144)

 

    “You could have called me, you know.”

    “I didn’t want to worry you.”

    “I don’t believe it.  Let me tell you something, Dream.  And I’m only going to say this once, so you’d better pay attention.

    “You are utterly the stupidest, most self-centered excuse for an anthropomorphic personification on this or any other plane!  An infantile, pathetic specimen!  Feeling all sorry for yourself because your little game is over, and you haven’t got the—the balls to go and find a new one!”  (loc. 214)

 

“Mother? They took my dreams away from me!”  (loc. 62)

    There’s nothing major to gripe about in Preludes & Nocturnes.  There is some cussing (10 instances in the first 25%), and a smidgen of sex and nudity, albeit those are done in a non-pornographic way.

 

    The Table of Contents either doesn’t work or is non-existent.  You can’t highlight text, but that’s because the whole e-book is scanned images of the pages from the comic books, and that's a small price to pay for the marvelous artwork and lettering.  And like any e-book consisting solely of images, this was a memory-hog on my Kindle.  Amazon lists it as eating up 811,037 KB of space.

 

    My biggest beef concerns the plethora of reissues of this series.  These include trade paperbacks, deluxe editions, 30^th Anniversary editions, Absolute Editions, annotated editions, and an Omnibus edition, all of which divide up those 75 issues in different proportions.  So even though my “Kindle 30^th Volume 1” was Issues 1-8, my “Full-Sized Paperback Volumes 2 and 3” are Issues 21-37 and Issues 38-56.   Do I hunt down something containing Issues 9-20 for the sake of completeness, or just shine it on and skip to the volumes/issues I already have? 

 

    These are all quibbles.  I’m not a big reader of Graphic Novels, yet Preludes & Nocturnes was a real treat for me, both from a storyline and an artistic angle.  Somehow, someway, Neil Gaiman is capable of adding a “Wow Factor” to any project he undertakes.

 

    9½ Stars.

Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman

   1996; 370 pages.  New Author? : No, but it’s been a while.  Genres : Urban Fantasy; British Contemporary Literature; Paranormal Fiction.  Overall Rating: 8*/10.

 

    Richard Mayhew has a good life.  He’s got a decent job and a girlfriend, Jessica, whom he loves very much, even if she is working very hard on changing him into a better man.

 

    Richard Mayhew is an honorable guy.  When he comes across a girl crumpled and bleeding on the sidewalk, he knows to do the right thing: take her to his apartment and tend to her wounds as best he can.

 

    Richard Mayhew is a bit naïve.  His girlfriend Jessica is not amused by his act of chivalry and lets him know it in no uncertain terms.  And that’s just the beginning of Richard’s troubles.  He’s about to lose Jessica, lose his job, and lose his apartment.  Amazingly, he's also about to lose the very city he lives in—London, England.

 

    All because he took pity on the injured girl named Door.  Hmm.  I wonder why they call her that?  Probably it’s short for “Doreen”.

 

    What other explanation could there be?

 

What’s To Like...

    Neverwhere was published in 1996 and was Neil Gaiman’s first “solo” novel, coming six years after he co-authored Good Omens with Terry Pratchett.  Both of these novels are fantasy tales, but where Good Omens is steeped in comedy (what else would you expect from the pen of Terry Pratchett?), Neverwhere is a darker work of Urban Fantasy.

 

    The story is set entirely in the two London.  The first half of the book focuses almost exclusively on worldbuilding, which is a Neil Gaiman forte.  Richard and the reader explore “London Below”, aka "The Underside”, meeting all sorts of strange characters and otherworldly species, while getting entangled in all sorts of dangerous plotlines.

 

    The main storyline finally gets underway in the second half of the book, and the major story threads include: a.) finding an angel named Islington; b.) acquiring some sort of “key” and bringing it to Islington; c.) helping Door figure out who killed her family, and why; d.) assisting Hunter in her quest to kill “the Beast of London”; and e.) somehow getting Richard back to “London Above” (aka “The Upside”) and back in good graces with Jessica.

 

    Gaiman’s attention to the details of London Below is masterful, to the point of almost overshadowing the action.  Among the things Richard and the reader encounter are The Floating Market, Earl’s Court, The Great Beast of London, Black Friars, The Velvets, The Golden, The Sewer Folk, and the Rat-Speakers.  I chuckled at “Blaise’s Reel” (be careful what you wish for!), and got a greater respect for the admonition “Mind The Gap!”

 

    The ending is spread out over the last 50 pages or so.  It’s a bit predictable, but I nevertheless found it to be fun.  Most of the plotlines get tied up nicely, and the last chapter serves as both an Epilogue and a teaser for a sequel which, ANAICT, was never written.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Vol-au-vents (n., plural) : small, round pastries filled with a savory mixture, typically of meat or fish, in a richly flavored sauce.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.6*/5, based on 11,364 ratings and 3,607 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.17*/5, based on 490,956 ratings and 26,644 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “Young man,” he said, “understand this: there are two Londons.  There’s London Above —that’s where you lived—and then there’s London Below—the Underside—inhabited by the people who fell through the cracks in the world.  Now you’re one of them.  Good night.”  (pg. 127)

 

    “We were looking for you,” said Richard.

    “And now you’ve found me,” croaked the marquis, drily.

    “We were expecting to see you at the market.”

    “Yes.  Well.  Some people thought I was dead.  I was forced to keep a low profile.”

    “Why . . . why did some people think you were dead?”

    The marquis looked at Richard with eyes that had seen too much and gone too far.  “Because they killed me,” he said.  (pg. 295)

 

“’Nice’ in a bodyguard,” lectured the marquis, “is about as useful as the ability to regurgitate whole lobsters.”  (pg. 118)

    As with any Neil Gaiman novel, trying to find things to grouse about in Neverwhere is a challenge.

 

    The cussing is light – just nine instances in the first 30% - which once again reinforces my maxim of “the more skilled the author, the less cusswords are needed for effect."

 

    Spending half the book on worldbuilding is probably not to everyone’s literary tastes, and that includes mine.  But if anyone can pull it off, it’s Neil Gaiman.  That’s all the quibbles I can come up with.

 

    I enjoyed Neverwhere but I wouldn’t call it Neil Gaiman’s best effort.  That’s reserved for American Gods (2001), Anansi Boys (2005), and The Ocean at the End of the Lane (2013).  It isn’t that Neverwhere is bad, it’s that those other three books are just so good.  Want a second opinion?  Wikipedia notes that China Miéville, one of my favorite present-day novelists, cites Neverwhere as one of the major influences for his stellar book, Un Lun Dun.

 

    8 Stars.  Neil Gaiman is currently involved in a major Graphic Novel series titled Sandman.  To date, there are nine books in the series.  I have the first one on my Kindle, and Santa brought me Books 2 and 3 for Christmas last week.  I think I'll begin reading them very soon.

The Ocean At The End Of The Lane - Neil Gaiman

    2013; 259 pages.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Dark Fantasy; Horror.  Laurels : NY Times #1 Bestseller; 2013 National Book Award “Book of the Year”; nominated for the 2013 Nebula Award – Best Novel; 2014 Loew Award “Best Fantasy Novel”; nominated for the 2014 World Fantasy Award “Best Novel”.  Overall Rating : 10*/10.

    The funeral was a godsend in a way.  It gave him an opportunity to visit the area where he grew up.  He saw his old house where he lived as a child.  Well not the same actual house; that one had been torn down and another built in its place.  And it made him think of  his parents and his sister, even though that was 40 years ago.

    Yet what he felt really drawn to was the neighbors’ farm a mile or so farther down the lane.  The old Hempstock place, with the duck pond at the back of their property.  There was Old Mrs. Hempstock, and her daughter (he presumed), Ginnie Hempstock.  And her daughter, also presumably, young Lettie.

    He dimly recalled meeting Lettie when she was eleven and he was seven.  How many years had it been since she moved to Australia?  Wispy memories swirled evasively inside his head as he tried to think back to when he was with Lettie.  They had some strange adventure, although the details eluded him now.  But he did recollect she said the duck pond was actually an ocean, and that the Hempstocks had come from the other side.

    Ah yes, the ocean.  The ocean at the end of the lane.

What’s To Like...

    The Ocean At The End of the Lane is Neil Gaiman’s 2013 highly-acclaimed novel, which won or was nominated for all sorts of awards, most of which are listed above.  It is a clever mixing of both horror and fantasy, and balances somber topics like loneliness and dread with things like trust and hope.  There’s some magic, some monsters, and some mayhem.  But the supernatural takes a backseat to a compelling storyline about two kids developing a deep and trusting friendship.

    The book is written in the First Person POV.  The protagonist, who is also the narrator, is never given a name, although we can deduce he is a boy.  This sounds awkward, but Gaiman makes it work smoothly.

    There are only a few characters – the three Hempstock women, the narrator’s family, a nanny, and an opal miner.  So if you’re tired of novels where there are dozens of characters to keep straight, this book’s for you.  I think this is also the first book I’ve read that contained both a prologue and an introduction.

    The setting is modest – just the two family farms and the fields and country lane between them.  But Neil Gaiman fills this with all sorts of neat things – a cute kitten, a foot worm,  a “Flowers for Algernon” moment, an adorable kitten, and wormholes that don’t look anything like those described in Quantum Physics.

    This is a standalone book, suitable for the kiddies if they don’t mind being scared out of their wits.  There are multiple and successive Ultimate Evils (UE’s), which I think is very rare.  This is the second book this year that I’ve encountered it (the other one is reviewed here), and it works marvelously here.

Kindle Details...

    The Ocean At The End Of The Lane sells for $10.99 at Amazon, which seems in line for a top-tier author.   Neil Gaiman has, of course, a slew of books available for the Kindle, ranging in price from $4.99 to $14.47.

Excerpts...

    I walked, gingerly, across the small yard to the front door.  I looked for a doorbell, in vain, and then I knocked. The door had not been latched properly, and it swung gently open as I rapped it with my knuckles.

    I had been here, hadn’t I, a long tme ago?  I was sure I had.  Childhood memories are sometimes covered and obscured the things that come later, like childhood toys forgotten at the bottom of a crammed adult closet, but they are never lost for good.  I stood in the hallway and called, “Hello?  Is there anybody here?”  (loc. 82)

    The second thing I thought was that I knew everything.  Lettie Hempstock’s ocean flowed inside me, and it filled the entire universe, from Egg to Rose.  I knew that.  I knew what Egg was – where the universe began, to the sound of uncreated voices singing in the void – and I knew where Rose was – the peculiar crinkling of space on space into dimensions that fold like origami and blossom like strange orchids, and which would mark the last good time before the eventual end of everything and the next Big Bang, which would be, I knew now, nothing of the kind.  (loc. 1932)

 “You don’t pass or fail at being a person, dear.”  (loc. 2346)

    Simply put – The Ocean At The End of the Lane is a masterpiece, fully deserving of a 10-star rating.  I kept turning the pages, wanting to see how Lettie and the narrator were going to get out of a rather in-over-their-heads situation.

    The writing is masterful, and so is the storytelling.  Just about the time you begin to tire of the first UE, Gaiman switches in something new and more horrifying.  Then he closes everything up with an ending that will leave you both sweating with relief and with a lump in your throat.

    If I were forced to say something negative to balance all this gushiness, the only thing I can think of is that the book’s too short.  I wasn’t ready for it to end.

    10 Stars.  Overwhelmingly recommended.  There’s a reason this was a New York Times #1 bestseller, and it’s not just because of the Neil Gaiman name on it.

Stardust - Neil Gaiman

1999; 333 pages.  Genre : Fantasy Fiction.  New Author? : No.  Laurels: Winner of the 2000 Ameircan Library Association's "Alex Award";  Winner of the 1999 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel.  Overall Rating : 9½*/10.

    Victoria Forester is the most beautiful girl in the land.  To win her heart, Tristan Thorn vows to bring her a falling/fallen star they saw together.  In return, she agrees to give him his heart's desire.

What could be easier, and what could possibly go wrong?

What's To Like...
Stardust is a fairy tale.  As such, it has romance and adventure; unicorns and princesses.  But it's also a Neil Gaiman tale.  As such, it has intrigue and murder; ghosts and witches; and a wee bit o' sex and cussing.

The storyline moves at a splendid pace, and it is a delight to follow along.  Tristan hasn't a clue as to how to find a fallen star, let alone snag it and take it back with him.  All he knows is that to do so, he will have to leave the "real" world, and venture into the land of Faeries.  That's fodder for Gaiman's fertile mind.

    Stardust is an easy-to-read book.  The writing is skilled; the plotline is well thought-out; the story twists are plentiful; and the ending is great.  And there's an illustrated version of it that I am told is also masterfully done.

Kewlest New Word...
Lammas-Tide : August 1st; aka "Harvest Day".   Three months after Beltain; and three months before Samhain.

Excerpts...
    There was a cracking sound, sharp as a shot, and the light that filled the grove was gone.
    Or almost gone.  There was a dim glow pulsing from the middle of the hazel thicket, as if a tiny cloud of stars were glimmering there.
    And there was a voice, a high clear, female voice which said, "Ow," and then, very quietly, it said "Fuck," and then it said "Ow" once more.
    And then it said nothing at all, and there was silence in the glade.  (pg. 93)

    "If you touch me," said the star, "lay but a finger on me, you will regret it forever-more."
    "If ever you get to be my age," said the old woman, "you will know all there is to know about regrets, and you will know that one more, here or there, will make no difference in the long run."  She snuffled the air.  (pgs. 321-322)

There was once a young man who wished to gain his heart's desire.  (pg. 1)
    Neil Gaiman is probably my favorite contemporary author.  He can pen "heavy" novels such as American Gods and Anansi Boys; and  he can pen "lighter" stuff like Stardust.  They are all equally brilliant.  Do you think I have stardust in my eyes?  Check out the awards he's won here.

    The negative reviews at Amazon fall mostly into two groups.  First, there are those who are shocked that there is sex and cussing in the book.  Hey folks, it's an adult fairy-tale.  Second, there are those who say the movie is better.  I can't say, not having seen it.  Perhaps the lesson here is read the book before renting the video.

    As for me, I found it to be a wonderful and entertaining read.  But then, I expect that from Neil Gaiman.  9½* Stars.

Fragile Things - Neil Gaiman

2006; 355 pages. Full Title : Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders. New Author? : No. Genre : Anthology; Fantasy. Awards : 2007 Locus Award for Best Collection. Overall Rating : 6½*/10.

.

A collection of 31 Gaiman-penned short stories, poems and one novella, all of which were published previously. There are aliens and vampires, horror and humor, sock monkeys and Scheherazade, Sherlock Holmes and H.P. Lovecraft. The latter are paired in a single story.

.

What's To Like...

A slew of twisty tales from the fertile mind of Neil Gaiman. These aren't Gaiman rejects - four of the stories won Hugo or Locus Awards. Some are light-hearted, others dark. A few bordered on being lewd, which was a new side of Gaiman for me. The introductions to each one, containing background on why he wrote it, are really interesting.

.

The Best of the Bunch...

October In The Chair - The 12 months meet to tell themed stories to each other, and tonight, October tells a ghost story. Beautifully done. My Life - A bit of prose written to accompany a picture of a sock monkey. A great example of Gaiman's storytelling skills. Feeders & Eaters - A cannibal romance. The Day The Saucers Came - Just how many things can go wrong on the day the world comes to an end? The Monarch of the Glen - A mini-sequel to American Gods, with Shadow going to Scotland.

.

Kewl New Words...

Kedgeree : a dish of rice, hard-boiled eggs, and flaked fish. Guying (vb.) : making fun of. Foeter : a rotting mess (I think). Cachinnation : loud, convulsive laughter. Scatty : rattlebrained. Frottage : rubbing the body against another person for sexual gratification. Bowdlerize : to remove material from a book to make it less vulgar or offensive. Scumble : to soften the colors or outlines of something. Bifurcated : divided into two parts. Tachyon (adj.) : technically, of a hypothetical subatomic particle that travels faster than the speed of light. But here it was "tachyon swans". Tontine : a form of life insurance where, on the death of a participant, his share is destributed to the remaining members of the group. Bothy : a small, primitive hut out in the countryside, left unlocked and available for anyone to use free of charge.

.

Excerpts...

"The brides!" came the whisper from beyond the door, and it redoubled and resounded until it seemed to her that the very house itself throbbed and echoed to the beat of those words - two syllables invested with longing, and with love, and with hunger.

Amelia bit her lip. "Aye. The brides. I will bring thee brides. I shall bring brides for all."

... And then one ghost voice hissed, "Yes, and do you think we could get her to throw in a side order of those little bread roll things?" (pg. 59-60)

.

"I was never much of a one for cats," he said suddenly. "Not really. I liked dogs. Big, faithful things. You knew where you were with a dog. Not cats. Go off for days on end, you don't see them. When I was a lad, we had a cat, it was called Ginger. There was a family down the street, they had a cat they called Marmalade. Turned out it was the same cat, getting fed by all of us. Well, I mean. Sneaky little buggers. You can't trust them." (pg. 224-225)

.

"We knew that it would soon be over, and so we put it all into a poem, to tell the universe who we were, and why we were here, and what we said and did and thought and dreamed and yearned for. We wrapped our dreams in words and patterned the words so that they would live forever, unforgettable. Then we sent the poem as a pattern of flux, to wait in the heart of a star, beaming out its message in pulses and bursts and fuzzes across the electromagnetic spectrum, until the time when, on worlds a thousand sun systems distant, the pattern would be decoded and read, and it would become a poem once again." (pg. 266)

.

But where does cantagion end and art begin? (pg. 267)

Like any anthology, Fragile Things has its gems and its paste, and two readers might disagree on which stories are which. Like all short stories, character development and plot depth are sacrificed for the sake of a quick-moving tale. It is no coincidence that the crown jewel here, The Monarch of the Glen, is also the longest story - 54 pages in length.

.

Fragile Things won't supplant whatever is currently your favorite Gaiman book, and some of the "rawer" stories and language may not be to everyone's taste. This is definitely not a book for the kiddies. If you've never read a Gaiman book, don't start here. Yet every reader will find some of the stories to be really good, and for those Gaimaniacs among us, this is a worthy collection. 6½ Stars.

Anansi Boys - Neil Gaiman

2005; 387 pages. Awards : Locus Award, British Fantasy Society Award, Mythopoeic Award (all 2006). A NY Times #1 Best Seller (2005). Gaiman declined to have it nominated for a Hugo Award (which seems a bit strange). Genre : Contemporary Fantasy. Overall Rating : 9½*/10.

.

Fat Charlie is in London, unenthusiastically planning his wedding, when word comes that his estranged father has died while on a karaoke stage in Florida. He reluctantly travels across the pond to pay his respects, and learns two surprising facts. First, his father was a god (Anansi). Second, he has a brother (Spider). The brothers meet, and Gaimanesque insanity ensues.

.

What's To Like...

This is a wonderfully-written book; full of humor, wit, murder and mayhem, love, and unexpected twists and turns. We won't give any details here, as spoilers would ruin the reading experience.

.

The brothers constitute a complete Odd Couple. Fat Charlie is the epitome of boring normalcy, but you can't help but like him. Spider lives for the moment, is all about excitement and not having ties to anything, and seems to have inherited all of his father's magical abilities. You can't help but warm to him as well.

.

All the characters (and gods) are interesting, and even the baddies have a certain charm. The story wraps up neatly, and you're left wanting more.

.

Kewl New Words...

Lubricious : Having a smooth and slippery quality (I guess I should've deduced that one). Nictitating : Blinking the eyes. Koan : A puzzling, paradoxical statement or story. Snog : to touch with the lips against someone's mouth, cheek, etc. as an expression of love or greeting. Saveloy : A ready-cooked and highly-seasoned sausage.

.

Excerpts...

It begins, as most things begin, with a song.

In the beginning, after all, were the words, and they came with a tune. That was how the world was made, how the void was divided, how the lands and the stars and the dreams and the little gods and the animals, how all of them came into the world. (opening paragraphs, pg. 1)

.

Until now Spider had regarded women as more or less interchangeable. You didn't give them a real name, or an address that would work for longer than a week, of course, or anything more than a disposable cell-phone number. Women were fun, and decorative, and terrific accessories, but there would always be more of them, like bowls of goulash coming along a conveyor belt, when you were done with one, you simply picked up the next, and spooned in your sour cream. (pg. 186)

.

Absatively!!

Anansi Boys is a spin-off of American Gods, but is not as dark and not as epical. The fate of the world doesn't hang in the balance; just the family sanity. Yet that doesn't mean it's a lesser work. Essentially, it plays "The Hobbit" to AG's "Lord of the Rings". I really can't think of any negatives to point out. So we'll give it 9½ Stars, and recommend it highly to all Gaimaniacs.

American Gods - Neil Gaiman

2001; 588 pages. Genre : Contemporary Fantasy. Awards : 2002 Hugo Award; 2002 SFX Magazine Award; 2002 Bram Stoker Award; 2004 Geffen Award. It cleaned up, man. Overall Rating : A..

    The story follows Shadow, a somewhat naive and sunny-dispositioned chap, after he gets out of prison and falls in with a bunch of long-forgotten gods, the main one of which is named Wednesday, and whom we quickly figure out is an incarnation of the Norse god, Odin. Wednesday's rallying lots of old, forgotten gods and legends (like Johnny Appleseed) in preparation to a war against the "new" American gods - such as the Internet; the Media, etc.

What's To Like...
    There's a slew of complex plotlines, all of which Gaiman manages to deftly tie up by the end of the book. The plot-twists will leave you mumbling, "I didn't expect that". I found almost all the characters - whether they were major or minor; good or bad; humans or gods - to be 3-D and interesting. Finally, it's a mythology-lover's smorgasbord. Gaiman pulls in gods and folk characters from all sorts of nationalities - German, Norse, Egyptian, Slavic, American Indian; India Indian; Arab, and more.

.

Can't you say anything negative?...
    Not a lot. The book reads like a mini-trilogy. The first 200 pages are fantastic; and so are the last 200. The middle 200 pages (where Shadow is hanging out in Lakeside) drag just a bit. And call me a prude, but the sex scenes were a tad raunchy and unnecessary. They could've been edited out, and Gaiman would still have a bestseller on his hands, but it would now be something that a High School Lit class could read and discuss. I didn't need to know the lurid details about how Salim and the Ifrit managed to meet and swap identities.
.
What kind of plotlines are there?
    #1 : Shadow is on a quest to figure out who he is.
    #2. : Shadow is trying to find out who his father was. Mom never talked about him.
    #3. : Shadow's wife passes away (in a most Garpian manner) right before he's let out of prison. She's now a ghost (insert plug here to watch 'Ghost Whisperer' on Friday nights); and Shadow is most persistent in trying to find a way to bring her back from the dead.
    #4. : Why are kids disappearing at the rate of one a year from Lakeside?
    #5. : How can Odin (or any other god) be hanging out in America and at the same time have people still believing in him back in Scandinavia?
    #6. : How can the new American gods be overcome?
    #7. : That whole Armageddon/Ragnarok thing.

    .And they all get resolved by the end of the book. No 11-part series here. We'll give American Gods an "A" and look forward to reading the kinda-sorta-but-not-quite sequel, Anansi Boys, in the near future.

Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett

Full Title : "Good Omens - The Nice And Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch". 1990; 398 pages. Genre : Fantasy Satire. Overall Rating : B+.

.

Armageddon is coming! Aliens are descending, Atlantis is rising, and Tibetans are tunneling. Far beneath the abyssmal sea the kraken stirs, and ten billion sushi dinners cry out for vengeance. The 4 horsemen of the Apocalypse (War, Famine, Death and Pollution. Pestilence retired when penicillin was discovered) have gathered and there's just one small problem - the Antichrist seems to have been mislaid.

.

What's To Like...

This is delightful silliness with a bunch of very likeable characters. Among them are the eventually-found Antichrist and his playmates; Newton Pulsifier (witchfinder), and Anathema Device (professional descendant and occultist). The main stars are two angels - Aziraphale (who moonlights as a rare-book collector) and Crowley (who did not so much fall as to saunter vaguely downwards). These two have counterbalanced each other for 6,000 years and 15 minutes. Over time, a friendship has developed and neither one is very keen on the End of the World happening just now.

.

The storyline is well-structured. There are a slew of threads that converge nicely at the end. Gaiman and Pratchett make a good team, although I think Pratchett wrote the majority of Good Omens. You can find his trademark mangled metaphors here, and his always-witty footnotes. And Death, who always speaks in UPPERCASE LETTERS, is a direct import from Discworld.

.

"It was going to be a dark and stormy night."

As good as Good Omens is, it didn't fall into the "couldn't put it down" category for me. I think the weakness is the subject matter itself. Armageddon is just not that funny of a topic. It's kinda like Monty Python doing a movie about the Bubonic Plague. Yes, you can come up with some nifty one-liners ("Bring out your dead!"). But not two hours' worth of wit. The same applies here - it's very ambitious, yet well nigh impossible to write 400 pages of zaniness about Armageddon.

.

Nevertheless, Gaiman & Pratchett do an excellent job. Underneath all the satire, there are some very good eschatological (jeez, I've always wanted to use that word in a review) issues addressed here. So we'll give it a B+ rating and recommend it to anyone who isn't in deathly fear of the Book of Revelation.